Light in elementary biological reactions

Light plays an important role in biology. In this review we discuss several processes and systems where light triggers a biological response, i.e. photosynthesis, vision, photoreceptors. For these functions Nature has chosen simple elementary chemical reactions, which occur in highly specialized and organized structures. The high efficiency and specificity of these reactions make them interesting for applications in light energy conversion and opto-electronics. In order to emphasize the synergism in studies of natural and synthetic systems we will discuss a few of each kind, with similar functions. In all cases light triggers a rapid sequence of events, which makes ultrafast spectroscopy an ideal tool to disentangle reaction mechanisms and dynamics.